Panasonic PT-AE900U

4.5 stars

"Best HD deal. Beware the sales call ..." on March 31, 2006 by kevva

Pros: Great picture and easy to use.

Cons: Broadway Photo and Video.

Summary: I borrowed one of these for a week to check it out at home and it pretty much sold itself.

The Good:
No doubt about it, for the money this is the best HD deal out there. It has a built-in line-doubler, to give you a de-interlaced picture from regular 480i. Also has 3:2 dropdown, to eliminate flicker/timing issues from movies originally shot at 24 fps. It handles 720p quasi-natively, by using the middle band of 720 lines rather than scaling. It takes all standard inputs, including component and HDMI. The image rocks. Virtually no false contouring, accurate colors, deep contrast and auto-detection for most signal formats.

The Bad:
The supplied manuals and documentation aren't great, though it does get you through all the basics. E.g. info on de-interlacing and 3:2 is scant. Manufacturer’s rebates are always a risk – you have to carefully go through all your junk mail for weeks so as not to miss it, hiding behind coupons and snake-oil offers, and there’s no come-back if you do. I wish they’d provide even more optical zoom so that you could shrink TV-sourced images down to a watchable size: in an 18’ room, the minimum diagonal size is around 7’6”. This shows up too many imperfections in SD TV and, in any case, it would be nice to have an option to shrink it to a more standard TV size - with an ultra bright image - and treat it like a regular TV. Most standard TV programming isn’t intended to be blown up so large. I’m sure that when they made the Teletubbies, they didn’t imagine them at 7’ tall scaring the bejesus out of your kids ;o) At, say, 4’ diagonal it would look so much better. DVD sources, even at 480i, tend to be much cleaner and scale very well after doubling.

& The Ugly:
I originally ordered through Broadway Photo & Video. It offered the cheapest price (though S&H was twice the competition) and advertised that it was in stock and would ship within 1-2 business days. I even called (per advice I’d read here on CNET) to verify that they were fully authorized and had the item in stock before I placed my order.
Then came the pushy sales call that claimed it was ready to go… but before shipping it, did I want: a ceiling mount, a special carrying case and a 3-year extended service plan? All these things were apparently necessary since it was unstable without the mount, it had an “external lamp” that was easily broken, and the manufacturer’s guarantee was only 90 days. In fact: it sits on a shelf perfectly well (that setup is recommended for noise reduction and ease of access for cleaning), it does not have an “external lamp”, and the guarantee is for 1 year.
They opened the call with “It’s in the box, ready to go”. That was until I refused to order all the extras and buy the 3 year extended service plan; then came the e-mail “It’s out of stock. Please follow this link to cancel your order”. I phoned to check the new delivery status and they canceled the order. Clearly at this price, they only make money on the extras and if they can’t get you to buy them – they don’t want your order.
Note: CNET doesn’t list them in their Buying Choices, but they do list them via a Sponsored Match link.